Xiomara Castro Brings Hope to Hondurans

Álvaro Verzi Rangel Hondurans elected the leader of the Partido Libertad y Refundación (Libre), Xiomara Castro, as the new president of the nation and successor to Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), questioned for corruption and drug trafficking, whose National Party was ousted after 12 years of power, reached after the “soft coup” against Manuel Zelaya, coincidentally…

Honduras: The Libre Party Wants to Return Dignity to the People of San Pedro Sula

Zoe Alexandra Omar Menjivar is the vice-mayoral candidate for the Libre Party in San Pedro Sula. Photo: MAJD Omar Menjivar, the candidate for vice-mayor in the city of San Pedro Sula, discussed the proposal to transform the city and to prioritize the needs of those people who have been abandoned for years San Pedro Sula…

Padre Melo: “Hondurans Want Their Vote to Be Respected in the Historic Elections”

Ismael Moreno or Padre Melo, is a Jesuit priest and the general director of Radio Progreso and a member of the Team of Reflection, Research and Communication (ERIC) part of the platform of the Social Apostolate of the Jesuits in Honduras. He spoke to Peoples Dispatch ahead of the general elections to be held in…

Elections in Honduras: The Challenge of Ending Twelve Years of Neoliberalism

Giorgio Trucchi Honduras is at the most important crossroads of its recent history On November 28, more than 5 million Hondurans will be asked to elect the President of the Republic, 128 deputies to the National Congress, 20 to the Central American Parliament, 298 mayors and more than 2 thousand municipal councillors. As the election…

Zúniga Cáceres: Violence and Intimidation Leave Bloody Imprint on Honduran Elections

Zoe Alexandra Supporters of the progressive Libre Party at a campaign event. The Libre presidential candidate Xiomara Castro is set to win the elections on Sunday November 28. Photo: Twitter/ Xiomara Castro Ahead of Sunday’s elections in Honduras, Olivia Zúniga Cáceres, congresswoman of the Libre Party, talks about the violence, hate and intimidation suffered by…

Honduran Campesino Leader Explains the ZEDEs

Kawsachan News A wide range of sectors in Honduras are continuing to mobilize against the Economic Development and Employment Zones (ZEDEs) with the general election now one month away. Campesino, indigenous and Afro-descendant movements and communities say the large scale territorial concessions amount to a flagrant violation of national sovereignty and will result in mass displacement. Frequent protests against…

Afro-Indigenous People in Honduras Are Being Forcibly Displaced. Washington Is Complicit.

Miriam Miranda Many would-be migrants, like the Garifuna, would love nothing more than to stay in their homes. It’s Washington that’s making it difficult. On this Indigenous Peoples’ Day, I want to tell you about my people, the Garifuna. We’re an Afro-Indigenous people, descended from Arawaks and Africans. Our ancestral territory spans the Caribbean border of…

US Intervention and Capitalism Have Created a Monster in Honduras

W. T. Whitney Chilean author and human rights advocate Ariel Dorfman recently memorialized Orlando Letelier, President Allende’s foreign minister. Agents of dictator Augusto Pinochet murdered Letelier in Washington in 1976. Dorfman noted that Chile and the United States were “on excellent, indeed obscenely excellent, terms (like they are today, shamefully, between the United States and…

Honduras: From Repressive Dictatorship to Participatory Democracy

Enrique Alberto Flores Lanza A proposal to get out of the worst social, economic and political crisis of our recent history. REFOUNDATION AND SOCIAL CONSENSUS. In Honduras every citizen who enjoys freedom of conscience, and submits to the force of reason, agrees on the need to end the opprobrious and repressive Dictatorship of Juan Orlando…

OFRANEH Communique: International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances

August 30, 2021 La Ceiba, 30/08/2021 More than 13 months after the forced disappearance of the president of the Board of Trustees of the Garifuna community of Triunfo de la Cruz, Albert Snaider Centeno Thomas and with him three more young Garifuna from the same community (Milton Joel Martínez Álvarez, Suami Aparicio Mejía García and…

From the Invasion of Panama (1989) to Recolonization (2009): Other Forms of Imperial Terrorism

Stella Calloni On December 20, 1989, over 27,000 soldiers, including Special Forces and former combatants from Vietnam, part of the Fleet and dozens of helicopters, in addition to testing new planes and weapons on the small, practically defenseless country, delivered a brutal message to Central America and the entire region. The recently created Panamanian Defense…

David Castillo Found Guilty in Assassination of Berta Cáceres

Zoe Alexandra David Castillo, former president of DESA, was found guilty in the assassination of Berta Cáceres. Cáceres’ organization, COPINH, declared the ruling a ‘people’s victory’ and step towards breaking the pact of impunity in Honduras Roberto David Castillo, the former president of the Desarrollos Energéticos S.A. (DESA) company and a West Point trained military…

The US Stake in Nicaragua and Honduras’s 2021 Elections

John Perry Both Honduras and Nicaragua hold presidential elections in November 2021 and the US government has a strong interest in both, although for rather different reasons. Both have incumbent presidents who will either stand again or, in the case of Honduras, more likely be replaced as candidate by a successor seen as reliably committed…

Honduran State: Both Judge and Perpetrator in the Disappearance of Four Garifuna Youths

Angel Huerta On May 18, the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH) and the Garifuna Committee for the Investigation and Search for the Disappeared of Triunfo de la Cruz – SUNLA held the virtual forum Institutional Racism and the denial of access to truth and justice to the Garifuna people in the context of the forced…

COVID-19 as Pretext for Repression in the Northern Triangle

John Perry “He’s not a doctor, I don’t think.” Trump had just finished a phone call with Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), the de facto president of Honduras who runs a  narco-state[1]. On April 30, JOH was indirectly implicated in drug and murder charges by the US Justice Department[2] in a case against a former chief…

From the Murder of Berta Cáceres to Dam Disaster in Uttarakhand

Don Fitz March 2, 2021 was the five year anniversary of the murder of Berta Cáceres, who opposed the Agua Zarca dam in Honduras. That date was less than one month after the deaths of dozens of people from Tehri Dam disaster in Uttarakhand, India. The two stories together tell us far more about consequences…

Honduras: Five Years Demanding Justice

Peoples Dispatch Berta’s organization, COPINH, has called for a series of global actions to intensify the struggle demanding justice in her case Five years have passed since Berta Cáceres was assassinated in her home in La Esperanza, Honduras. Berta was the co-founder and coordinator of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) and…

Guatemalan Security Forces Repress Honduran Migrant Caravan Heading Towards the US

Peoples Dispatch Guatemalan security forces repressed thousands of Honduran migrants with tear gas and stun grenades on January 17, in the town of Vado Hondo, in the department of Chiquimula, bordering Honduras. Photo: Prensa Libre Guatemalan military and police forces, on January 17, repressed the caravan of thousands of Honduran migrants and prevented them from…